“What do you think it means?”
Cazia couldn’t answer. Something at the back of her mind was churning, trying to come to the surface, but she couldn’t bring it out.
Tejohn moved to the edge of the braided wood that formed the balcony, waving his hand to move in the water, then looked down. There was no railing, of course, and if he lost his footing, his armor would drag him down to the parts of the city that had been forbidden to them. Cazia fought the urge to grab hold of him.
The soldier was not looking at the balcony. He was looking out into the murky darkness of the lake. “There’s something below us, too,” he said. “I caught a glimpse of it when they pulled us in.”
Cazia stared down into the darkness and felt goose bumps run all along her skin. What did the alligaunts have at the bottom of the lake? “We can’t swim down to take a look,” she said, “but I have a different idea.”
She reached down and examined the globe light attached to the outer edge of the balcony. It looked very like a basic lightstone, although it was made of wood, and she could feel the potency of its magic well before she touched it. A globe with an enchantment this powerful would glow for years.
The polished metal dish behind it reflected the light outward like a beacon. Cazia knelt to examine it and was startled to realize the dish was pure gold and thin enough to fold up and put in her pocket.
She touched her jacket pocket, trying to convince herself this was a good idea, and realized she’d lost the two translation stones she’d made for this trip. It was just as well.
The globe had grown outward from the wooden braid behind it like a flower bud, right through a hole in the center of the dish. They had no way to hack it free. She didn’t bring a saw and there was no “groomer” nearby to steal from. Tejohn’s sword would be useless in all this water. The resistance would be so great that they could never swing it at full strength.
Water. Of course. “Take hold of the light,” she said, “and don’t fall.”
He did. Cazia began the Fifth Gift, but not the version that created water. This time, she wanted to purify it, but only close to where the wood grew around the globe’s tail. This was the spell Lar had set out to Tempest Pass to learn, the one that was supposed to turn the war against the grunts. Such a tiny spell, but it worked. The wooden stem vanished.
The globe came free and began to float toward the surface. It had worked. The dish of hammered gold dropped down and away from them.
Tejohn caught the globe and handed it to her. It was lighter than she’d expected, but not by much.
Cazia began the Tenth Gift. One of the darts in her quiver would have traveled farther in the water, but she would give the globe whatever momentum she could.
When a powerful, skillful adept casts a spell, they do not just exert power. They put their intention into that power and the magic does their bidding.
The more skilled she became with her magic—the more The Great Way entered her—the more accurate her darts were. Doctor Eelhook had been a bureaucrat who rarely cast a spell; every dart she had shot was a waste of iron, but now Cazia could shoot five at a time and all of them would strike home.
This was no different. She willed the light to fly outward and it did. Not in a sudden rush, the way her darts left her hand, but in a steady outward push that sent it out and down, out and down.
She and Tejohn stepped back from the edge of platform to the braided structure behind them. There were no watchful eyes that they could see. Good. They’d been given leave to explore the city, not dismantle it. Still, the alligaunts wanted to understand them better, so here was their first opportunity. Humans are curious and we break things.
The light globe kept moving away from them slowly as it descended. It had already gone deeper than Cazia would have thought possible, when suddenly it bounced off of a protuberance and began to slowly float upward.
The light was far, but it cut through the murk, lighting up a space at least twenty-five feet all around.
“Are you seeing that?” Tejohn asked.
“I am,” Cazia answered.
A clawed hand. The light revealed a single gigantic clawed hand.
Chapter 33
“I don’t want to stand out here any more,” Cazia said. Tejohn didn’t have to say he agreed. He just followed her through the arch into the building…the city…
No, the hive. It really was a hive. Just beyond the tunnel opening, they found a small, squarish chamber no more than seven feet across. It was open on all four sides, and at the top and bottom, too. There was no lighting or adornment, only the twisted wood. Heavy braids ran upward through the corners of the chamber; only one heavy braid ran horizontally, as a sort of brace. Thinner braids shaped the openings between chambers.
The only light shone from the next chamber in. Cazia hurried to it and found a second globe. This one was much smaller and had no reflective dish. Cazia was tempted to take it, but only for a moment. She hoped to find more valuable prizes farther in.
The way ahead was dim and dark, but the way down was pitch black. Of course, Cazia could have gone to either side, circling around the edge of the city, but that wouldn’t satisfy her.
Above was another light, maybe five chambers up. With a glance at Stoneface to make sure he wasn’t scowling in disapproval, she began to climb.
It was so easy, she was almost embarrassed. She could kick off from a braid--the large horizontal brace was best, because the thin decorative ones flexed too much and stole her momentum--and dive upwards to the chamber above. Before she’d even reached the lit chamber, she’d figured out the most efficient way to jump from one level to the next. Swimming! Who knew it could be so much fun?
Tejohn was too weighed down by his armor and gear to follow her example, but he managed a very sensible one-handed climb up the braided supports. His other hand was needed to hold his spear, naturally. Cazia almost offered to carry it for him, but it seemed like an awkward, extremely personal thing to suggest.
“Let’s go deeper in,” Tejohn said, and they did, passing through ten or fifteen chambers before they came to something unusual.
It was a lit chamber, but the light was more blue than the others. Below the light, a square wooden board hung where one of the tunnel openings should have been. For a moment, Cazia thought she’d found a forbidden room, but a quick glance into an adjacent chamber showed that was not the case. It was just a large square slab of wood mounted on the support braids.
Tejohn shrugged. He didn’t know what it was, either. Cazia touched the tiny bulge in her cheek where the second gem was hidden. Where were the alligaunt’s homes? Where did they put their things?
Peering toward the center of the city, she could see faint glimmers of light shining from nearby chambers, as well as a slightly less dark circle at the very end. Was that the end of the hive? It seemed far, but not far enough to make a city.
Tejohn led her toward the center of the structure. “I wish there was more light,” he said quietly. There was something about the darkness and stillness of this nest of chambers that made them want to move quietly.
They passed beneath another blue light. Cazia tapped Tejohn’s shoulder and, when she had his attention, kicked to the chamber above. There was another wooden slab, but this one had a coil of rope on it.
There was no way to tell how it was attached. The coil seemed to be stuck as if by glue. Without waiting to see if Stoneface approved, Cazia pulled the rope away from the wood. It came freely, the knotted ends wriggling at her command. Third plunder.
Something tickled at Cazia’s memory. There was something she was forgetting--something important--and she needed to draw that realization to her waking mind.
Looking toward the center of the structure, she once again saw that dark gray circle that suggested the end of the chambers. Cazia started in that direction again, this time in the lead. The coil of rope responded to her thoughts like a well-trained pet, and she imagined the tricks she could do with it. S
he could make it dance, or sway like a serpent, or…
How Jagia would have laughed and screamed if she could see this. Cazia couldn’t suppress a terrible pang of loss.
So she was taken completely by surprise when she lunged into a chamber and scraped her shin against the leg of an alligaunt lurking in the darkness.
Cazia cried out in surprise as the creature thrashed in the darkness. It spun toward her, one eye bulging white, then swam for the nearest tunnel opening, bashing through the arch braid with its shoulder as it fled.
A moment later, Tejohn was beside her, his spear at the ready and his short sword in his other hand. The alligaunt did not immediately reappear, so he sheathed his sword and began to unsling his shield from his back. “I’m sorry, Cazia. You should let me go fir--”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “It was just a misunderstanding, right?”
They turned toward the opening the alligaunt had fled through. Small broken sticks floated near it. Two glowing eyes appeared.
“Arm yourselves,” a voice said out of the darkness. “Armor yourselves, too, if you need to. You are among killers.”
Cazia didn’t like that at all. She laid her hand on her knife. “Speaker brought us here and told us we could wander in safety.”
“Ah,” the voice said, sounding sadistic, “an assessment. Don’t get the wrong idea, prey. The Sacred Hunters will not suffer your presence gladly. I think I should take a nip out of you to remind you of the power of teeth and claws.”
Tejohn laughed. Cazia was so startled that she gaped up at him. It was a loud laugh, almost booming, and it sounded wildly out of place in these whisper-dark chambers. “Don’t bother trying to impress us, boy,” he said. “We both saw you flee in terror at the merest brush of your leg. Such boldness! Such courage!”
The alligaunt swam into their chamber, then up through the opening above, curling back around to make a sort of somersault in the water that returned him to his previous position. The only effect was to see that it could move very quickly in the water--certainly more quickly than Cazia--and that it had iron spikes on its tail.
“You toy with your life,” it said, quietly.
“Enough,” Tejohn said dismissively. “We were brought here for a purpose. Stop pretending you can do what you like with us. No one is impressed with this foolishness.”
“Foolishness!” For a moment, Cazia thought the alligaunt’s outrage would overcome its ability to speak. “Someone needs to teach you your place.” With that last word, it surged into the chamber, only turning away at the last moment to pass through a side opening.
Tejohn and Cazia watched it swim away. Just before it vanished into the gloom, it seemed to turn toward the center of the hive, but it was hard to be sure of that.
“How did you know to call it a boy?” Cazia asked. “How could you be sure?”
Tejohn sighed, then slung his shield on his back again. “I’m a weapons instructor. I know the sound of young warriors miming confidence, especially the ones who think the might of their empire lends might to their spear hand. Or jaw, I guess. Besides, haven’t you noticed that it’s only the small ones who wear the spikes on their tails?”
“No, I hadn’t.”
“I’d guess there’s a rite of passage involved in becoming dangerous enough to go without.”
The thought of a rite of passage made her think of the portals again, and suddenly the thought that had lingered at the bottom of Cazia’s memory made itself known.
“Voices out of the air,” she exclaimed. “That’s what I couldn’t remember.”
Stoneface glanced around as if watching for dangers, then guided Cazia toward the center of the hive. “Tell me as we go.”
“The Tilkilit Queen,” Cazia said, letting the old soldier lead her from chamber to chamber. “She said something to me about being ordered to go through the portal by the gods. She said there were voices out of the air… Fire take me, what did she say? She obeyed the voice of the god in the air, I think. I thought it was weird, because wouldn’t most people say god of the air instead of in the air?”
“They would. They do.”
“Right. Ivy says that Kelvijinian is the god of the earth… Anyway, I thought it was just that the Tilkilit are so incredibly stupid, but what if the queen was talking about the same sort of voice we heard on the lakeshore, before we were given alligaunt translation gems?”
“Speaker did recognize your anti-magic stone,” Tejohn said. He moved warily, as though expecting an attack. “What did he call it?”
“A spell-disruptor. Listen, what if…okay, what if the spell-disruptor, kinzchu stone, anti-magic spell, whatever you call it, what if it came from the alligaunts? What if they created it and gave it to the Tilkilit in the same way the Evening People gave us the Gifts?”
“That would mean the alligaunts are the masters of the Tilkilit.”
“And that the Tilkilit were sent through the portal by the alligaunts. But why? What does it mean?”
“What it means, I think,” Tejohn said, “is that we had better do well on this assessment.”
They traveled in silence for a few levels, moving closer to the end of the series of chambers. There was definitely a larger space ahead, and it was well lit.
“Mother told me almost the same thing,” Cazia said quietly. The look Tejohn gave her showed he didn’t understand. “Not my mother. Mother, the leader of the eagles. The ruhgrit.”
“She referred to voices out of the air?” Tejohn asked.
“Yes. Well, she called them voices from the deep above, or something, but the meaning is pretty much the same. She also referred to belly-crawlers.”
Tejohn lowered his voice. “The alligaunts crawl on their bellies when they move on land.”
“Which leaves us with the same question: why? Why send these creatures through the portal to Kal-Maddum?”
“Up ahead,” Tejohn said.
He was referring to the end of the chambers. They passed through three more openings and finally came to the center of the city.
It was nothing more than a wide-open space, a column of open water that stretched from the shadowy darkness of the shield above all the way down to the well-lit, sandy lake bottom. The whole hive curved around it, and glowing spheres were mounted at close intervals throughout.
There must have been nearly a hundred levels in the hive, and the open space before her… It was bigger around than the walls of the Palace of Song and Morning.
Cazia had never seen anything so colossal and could not imagine what it would look like on dry land. The alligaunts must have been extraordinarily powerful if they could grow so many trees in braids down here where the sun could never reach them.
Tejohn’s voice was quiet when he said, “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.”
Looking up, Cazia saw the columns of lights sway back and forth very slightly like tall grass in a gentle wind. The sight made her suddenly queasy; what if a sudden current pushed hard against that shield up there and toppled the whole hive? What made this stable?
Then she saw it. In addition to the heavy bracing braids of wood that grew both as vertical shoots and in rings around the center, there were five truly colossal braids spaced evenly around the open space. Each was as thick around as a tower, with huge trunks wound tightly together. They hold this place together. It would have taken a crew with iron axes a full day, working undisturbed, to cut through one of them.
“What is this place?” Cazia muttered.
“It’s the commons,” Tejohn answered. “Look.”
He pointed downward just as an alligaunt swam by, moving upward extremely fast. There were red ribbons tied to its arms and legs, not to bind it, but to trail artfully behind.
A second alligaunt swam by, seemingly chasing the first. Behind them both was a crowd of a dozen, swimming in a group.
Then Cazia noticed a huge, broad gray oval mounted on the far side of the hive. Four alligaunts tended it, leaning over to make m
arks on it with long styluses. They were drawing something; as Cazia watched, she realized it was a stand of marsh grasses with something crouched inside it.
“Do you hear the singing?” Tejohn asked.
Suddenly, she did. It was extraordinarily low, almost in whispers, but carefully harmonized, too. “That’s not much of a song,” she blurted, annoyed that the alligaunts had such primitive and uninteresting music.
“It’s perfect for them, I’d bet,” Tejohn said. “They’re hunters. They sneak into a hiding space, wait their for prey, then snatch them suddenly. Hunting is sacred, right? So, their music is quiet like a hunter lying in ambush, their artists draw hunting images over and over, and that…” He pointed toward the swimming alligaunt with the red streamers, whose procession had changed direction again and was heading downward. “That is some kind of play or mime.”
“The crowd in back must be the audience,” Cazia said, “and the ribbons represent blood streaming from wounded prey, right?”
Tejohn nodded. “That’s how it looks to me. And it makes sense. We put on plays about war; even after the Evening People made tales of war unacceptable, we kept telling them through symbolism.”
“And stories of love, too,” Cazia said.
“Yes, love and war. But alligaunts don’t seem to understand either. All they care about, all they want to record from their own lives, are their hunts. And this is the city commons, where they create it.”
Cazia watched the procession pass through the center of the commons far below her. The chasing alligaunt would soon catch its “prey.”
They passed in front of a light that was unlike the other globes. This one was far from the walls of the hive, hovering a foot or two above the lake bed. Also, the color and shape were wrong. The other lights were perfectly round and white or blue-white. This one bulged like misshapen fruit, and besides its own yellow glow, there were flashes of light playing across it like the sunlight on water.
The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way Page 37
